Shaman PvP guide
Rogue Rogues specialize in doing heavy melee damage and controlling a fight. There are two basic types of rogues, stun-lock and ambush. * A Stun-Lock rogue will try to keep you stunned for the entire fight. While they cannot actually achieve a perfect stun-lock, they can come very close. Your job is to wait for the gap in the stun and then break the stun-lock sequence. * An Ambush rogue will start with Ambush, Sinister Strike, Gouge, Backstab then Eviscerate. You will be only be stunned during the Gouge. Stealth Rogues can Stealth while not in combat and only on a 10-5 second cooldown. During combat they can Vanish, but on a 5 minute cooldown timer. A rogue trained in Preparation can Vanish twice in 10 minutes. * Flame Shock will keep the rogue from stealthing. However, the DOT duration is 12 seconds and the rogue's Blind is 10 seconds. If timed right, the rogue can wait until the DOT timer is 8 seconds(Unless the rogue uses Cloak of Shadows), Blind, wait for the DOT to fade then stealth. To counter this, make sure poison cleansing totem is up sinceBlindis a poison. * Magma Totem is mana expensive, has a medium duration (20 secs) and only an 8 yard radius, but will unstealth a rogue within it's radius on each pulse (2 seconds). You can use rank 1 Magma Totem to save mana. * Contrary to popular belief Earthbind Totem will NOT unstealth a vanished rogue on its first pulse if the rogue is within range. Shaman can almost always beat a rogue in duel, if the shaman attacks first. If the rogue applies poisons or stuns, the shaman can be considered defeated. Do everything you can to break the rogue's stealth. Since the rogue is slowed by Earthbind Totem or Frost Shock, the shaman can kite him around and spam shock/lightning bolt him, or if enhancement, engage in melee fight relying on a Windfury proc. Enhancement could joust with the rogue by running through the rogue, hoping for a windfury proc. General tips * Use a low-level Magma Totem to unstealth the rogue, would be wise trying to evaluate his Fire Resistance gear. * Use 1H weapon and shield to reduce the damage taken. * Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave may be the first thing to do as you will most likely be at half life or less. * Use Lightning Shield to do damage even while you are stunned * Use Tremor Totem to bring you or your mates out of Sap * Use Cure Poison. Rogues can have slow or DOT poisons on both blades. * Use Poison Cleansing Totem. Rogues rely on poisons, specially Crippling Poison. This is the best water-based totem for PvP combat. * Get and use the Grunt trinket to break out of stun * If you see an unstealth rogue, use Flame Shock, Earthbind Totem to kite the rogue. Be sure to keep him from stealthing and you should win with no problems. * Use Frost Shock to aid in kiting. * Use Fire Nova Totem consistently to deal supplemental damage. * When dueling a Rogue, consider starting out the fight in Ghost Wolf form, as Rogues cannot sap Beasts (which Ghost Wolf is counted as). * EZ kill/Summary- If they jump you, you're in deep trouble. Snare them, chug a heal potion, remove any poisons, run back while dropping an Earthbind Totem and Lightning Bolt them to death. Difficulty Rating: Medium to Hard Warrior * Heal. The key word to fighting a warrior is timing heals right. The biggest problems Shamans will encounter with a Warrior is Mortal Strike, which reduces heal effectiveness, and Hamstring, which limits mobility. * Use 1H weapon and shield. If the server isn't mature, fire resistances are usually low. This means that Flametongue Weapon is a useful weapon buff since the added fire damage ignores the armor rating of the warrior. * Use Grace of Air Totem to increase your dodge, but be mindful of Overpower. * Use Fire Nova Totem for supplementary damage. * Don't melee a warrior unless you have to. More often than not, they will close the distance with Intercept. * Use your PvP Insignia, Earthbind Totem and Frost Shock to get away from a warrior who charged you. Since patch 1.8, grounding totem does not absorb the stun effect of charge anymore. * Use Frost Shock for the damage and to kite them from you. Make sure you don't go too far or they will intercept you. * Try to get them down to half health before you attempt to start melee combat. * If you have Elemental Mastery or Nature's Swiftness, use it! * Good usage of your mana pool is the most important thing. * With luck, 2H or dual-wielded weapons with Windfury Weapon, and totems like Strength of Earth Totem, Grace of Air Totem, will be good enough to out damage a warrior in melee. However, against a well-geared warrior, you will take damage very rapidly without a shield. *Summary- Kite is the key to Victory. Difficulty Rating: Medium Priest * Use 2H weapon. * If you try to fight a Priest, they will probably use their Psychic Scream spell to scare you away. So, try to drop a Tremor Totem at just the right moment to keep yourself in control of the situation. * The battle basically comes down to a healing match. Do as much melee damage as you can, and whenever you see them channeling a spell, Earth Shock them to interrupt. You always want to have a Rank 1 Earth Shock set up in addition to your highest rank if you get low on mana, or don't want to waste mana. * Purge! A lot of priests will raise a Power Word: Shield and start healing when the situation becomes too dangerous. Dispelling the shield, followed by Earth Shock can effectively prevent this. Furthermore, priests will most likely have Power Word: Fortitude. Purge will remove that stamina buff and, consequently, HP. A neat trick with elemental shaman is you can cast lightning bolt, and while the bolt is in motion, you could purge their shield before it hits. * Be wary of smart priests that feign a heal by first casting some other spell (which a shaman might shock out of a reflex). *EZ Kill- First, Purge their shield, and any other buffs. drop a Tremor Totem. Then feel free to tank and use the insta DD shock for spell interrupts. Difficulty Rating: Easy What about considering the shadowspec? How would you take down a specifically shadow specced priest? * When dealing with a shadow specced Priest the battle changes drastically depending on who gets the first jump. * If you jump him first make sure to drop a Tremor Totem then as you run to the priest you should purge him to get rid of any buffs. Now the Priest should Psychic Scream out of reflex. Well, that Tremor Totem you placed should only make the fear run for about 3 sec and the priest will probably cast Power Word: Shield, Inner Fire, and Power Word: Fortitude. All that probably took 3 seconds so now is your chance to get into melee range and tank him until he is dead. Make sure you use insta DD shock to interrupt his spells. Don't use your Earth Shock as a shadow priest will just Silence you. * As an elemental shaman, a good trick is to use earthbind instead of tremor totem. But why? Because by earthbinding the priest and kiting the priest, the priest is at your mercy. But what about dispel? If the priest were to dispel, the EB would just reapply itself to the priest. If the priest continues to dispel, he will be playing defensive and giving you time to destroy him. It even better if a shadow priest tries to kite you because then he is giving everything to you for free.If the priest gets the jump on you, hope you have earthbind down :D. When he fears you from himself, you will gain range on him and you will have the advantage yet again. * If they jump you, you're in some deep trouble. You will no doubt have to wait out the Psychic Scream for 8 seconds, by then you have Shadow Word: Pain, have gotten hit with Mind Blast or Mind Flay and have about 75-50% health left. Now that Psychic Scream is over cast a lower rank Lightning Bolt to get the priest to use up Silence then use your best Lesser Healing Wave to recover your health. Drop a Grounding Totem, Purge him, then get into melee range and tank him until he is dead. Make sure you use insta DD shock to interrupt his spells. Difficulty Rating: Medium-Hard Warlock * These will be your toughest fights, not the least because warlocks have multiple means of crowd-controlling you and they have the all-powerful death coil, a 500 dmg life steal that also sends you running horrified (doesn't count as fear, so tremor doesn't help) for 2-3 seconds. A good warlock will wand your grounding totem, death coil you, begin casting fear, kill your tremor totem, dot you up, cast shadow bolt once or twice, depending on how long the fear lasts, recast fear, etc, etc. In addition to usually being able to keep you powerless at your keyboard, warlocks can also silence you with their felhunter for approximately 4 seconds (locking down the nature school if they time it on a heal spell) with a 30 second cooldown, and purge buffs, such as the insanely-beneficial earth shield, for us resto shaman. Of course, this also means that felhunters can purge nature's swiftness, elemental mastery, etc, so you should use your buffs gained from talents as quickly as possible to avoid them being wasted. So, how do you beat warlocks? I'll focus first on duels, but most of this will apply to world PvP as well, with the major exception of the beginning. * Throw down your grounding, tremor, searing, and fire resistance totems, and challenge a warlock to a duel. (Or, if you/or your opponent prefers, wait until the 'duel starting...3...2...1...' flutters across your interface before throwing down totems.) You should purge immediately to remove demonic armor or any other buffs he has on. Tremor totems and grounding totems should be thrown down as often as you have them off cooldown, so that your opponent has to either 1. stop what he's casting in order to wand it, or 2. watch as your grounding totem eats his fear (yes it can eat fear), Shadow Bolt, Conflagrate, Soul Fire, Immolate, Death Coil, etc... or you break his fear after 1 second thanks to the Tremor Totem. The main key in beating the warlock is to prevent him from getting his death coil/fear/spell lock (the felhunter silence) combo rolling, and to keep beating on him with melee and shocks. Keep Flame Tongue weapon on your 1h or Windfury on your 2h to do maximum burst damage, and pound on him at melee range while you can. Use a Frost Shock to help close the distance if necessary, and don't worry about spell interruption: grounding totem works just as well as Earth Shock. * Resto shammies, if the warlock is not using the felhunter, keep that earth shield up; you'll regen health faster than he can kill you if his felguard, succubus, or voidwalker is beating on you. Don't bother casting it if he has his felhunter out since he'll just purge it. * Elemental shammies, use that instant crit power right at the beginning to hit the warlock hard and perhaps damage his pet as well, and chances are it'll be off cooldown by close to the end of the fight. Since you should have just as much, if not more range than him on your spellcasting, focus on killing the lock from far away with lightning, rotating grounding totem and earth shock to interrupt his casting. * Enhance shammies, if you are duel wielding, double Windfury can do significant damage to a cloth-wearing warlock in a short amount of time. Just remember to rotate earth shocks and grounding/tremor totems to keep the warlock effectively silenced as you pound on him. * A lot of Warlocks will save their Death Coil until either you or they are low on HP (typically around 20-30%). Learning to roughly time your Grounding Totem so that it eats Death Coil dramatically increases your chances of surviving a fight with a Warlock. * For hybrid classes and resto shammies, even if the felhunter is out AND you are caught within the lock's chain Fear/Shadow Bolt combo, you should be able to get a Nature's Swiftness and then a max rank Healing Wave (Should heal ya for minimum of about 1900, even non resto. As a resto shammy my rank 10 crits for more than 4k). Just put the two buttons next to each other on your bar for maximum proximity. As a final note: you can out heal anything short of a tier 2.5 or greater lock's spamming dots, Shadowburn, and Shadow Bolts on you just through Lesser Healing Wave. If you think you're getting low, throw down some appropriate totems to prevent fear/Shadow Bolts and start healing away. Best of luck killing your warlock friends! Difficulty Rating: depends on spec and gear, but generally medium Mage * Use 2H weapon. * Purge! Mages will have Ice Armor and Arcane Intellect cast on themselves as a standard buff. * Drop a Grounding Totem when the "hands light up" (which usually is the first thing you will see happen in case of a Fire Mage). * Earth Shock whenever you see them channeling a spell. * Try to figure out what type of Mage you're fighting quickly, and drop the appropriate totem - Frost Resistance Totem for Frost Mages, Fire Resistance Totem for Fire Mages. If they're an Arcane Mage... hope you've got some Arcane resistance built into your armor. * A Mage may try to Polymorph you. Don't panic though - you'll revert to your normal self if you take any damage, and while you're sheeped you'll quickly regain your health. * Play with their little mage minge. *EZ kill/Summary: The best tactic is to drop a Grounding Totem and a Fire or Frost Resist totem. Use DD shocks for spell interrupts and purge any shield they bring up. Tank them, use the snare totem or DD snare to keep them from gaining distance. (Sheeping tactics) Mages can be a pain, since they'll typically root you. At this point you have a few options: the Grounding Totem would be the best choice, followed by casting your fastest heal, or chugging a health potion as soon as you take damage. If possible, shock them to interrupt, but more than likely you won't have range for it. Once free from the root, close the distance and snare/interrupt or you're dead. Difficulty Rating: Medium (if they get the jump) Druid * Purge! * The druid is a weird class to battle. They can switch forms quite rapidly during combat, switching from a caster class to a warrior class, to a rogue class. The key adaptation is to treat every form as the associated class (IE. Cat Form as a rogue, Bear Form as a warrior and Druid form as a caster). * Should the druid start to run in Travel Form, slow him down with Frost Shock and Earthbind Totems. * Get in their face early, make them use their mana for healing. * Don't waste your mana! Most of your mana in this battle should be for healing yourself and keeping the druid as close as possible. *EZ kill/Summary: Drop a snare totem, strip any buffs they may have with purge, then tank them. Follow this up with insta DD snare and use insta DD shock to interrupt their casts. The Druid offers a unique fighting style since they can root and heal. This can be problematic. Rooted:1 if you are weak heal yourself.2 If you are high on health and the Druid isn't if you have range use Earth Shock if not use your strongest Lightening Bolt. Difficulty Rating: Medium Hunter * Ignore the pet. * A hunter is most effective from a distance. It is important to close the distance into a hunter's Dead Zone. * Use Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem to keep them in melee range. * Use Poison Cleansing Totem or Cure Poison. If you are doing things right, you'll be moving within a small area. * Use Grounding Totem to absorb potential traps such as a Freezing Trap. * Hunter stings are considered Poison. The most important one to remove is Viper Sting. * If you need to heal, be sure you're in melee range first. Slow him with Frost Shock and try to get in a quick heal with Lesser Healing Wave. Even if the pet is on your back you should be able to heal no problem with Lesser Healing Wave. Regular Healing Wave will give them too much time. (Hopefully you have the talents that improve your Lesser Healing Wave) * It's much better however if you kill him before you have to heal. Hunters are one of the few classes it's good to use almost all your mana on trying for a quick kill. * The longer the fight, the harder it gets. *EZ Kill/Summary- Hunters are easy if you manage to reverse-Kite. Make sure you are always in their Dead Zone. Ignore the pet and force the Hunter to melee you. You will most likely have more DPS at close range. Difficulty Rating: Medium Paladin * Use 1H and shield. 2H is a debatable choice, but 1H and shield is usually better. * Flametongue Weapon is a viable alternative to Windfury Weapon. If you opt for 2H weapon, choose Windfury because a lucky hit could kill the paladin while he still has mana. * Purge! (Again and again when you see him cast a seal.) * Don't waste your mana! Paladins are the Shaman's polar opposite: their spells are extremely efficient, but tend to be low on the massive burst damage that a Shaman can pump out. Since your burst damage is sketchy, however, you need to be able to beat the Paladin at their own efficiency game. * Some clever Paladins may try and trick you by repeatedly casting a low-rank Seal spell in an attempt to get you to Purge it off. Watch their mana bar: if you can barely see it dip when they cast it, it's unlikely that they're casting a higher rank Seal. * Use Rank 1 Earth Shock to interrupt any heals that the Paladin is doing, unless they're low enough and vulnerable enough (no bubble ready) that you can burst them down with a max rank Earth Shock. * Kite and harass until half of YOUR mana is gone. You will need the rest for healing. * Remember that Paladins can cast Divine Shield and then heal while invulnerable two to three times during the battle, while you watch helplessly. During that time heal yourself (if he heals under his magic shield, bandage yourself). * This battle may last a while. Remember to let your naturally high spirit do its job. Also remember that you CAN'T gain more mana while you're casting spells. So make sure you have some time between your casts. Mana regeneration only starts 5 seconds after your last cast. * Most of the time, whoever runs out of mana first loses. The best thing you can do is get them to use their mana. And watch out for Lay on Hands; it can be cast with 1 mana. * Divine Shield cannot be purged, but Blessing of Protection can be. Blessing of Protection looks like a lot of whitish hoops traveling around them. If the paladin is using this, Divine Shield is most likely on cooldown. Blessing of Protection ONLY stops melee damage, but they can't melee with it. Thus, only Purge it if you're using melee as your primary damage output. *EZ Kill/Summary Paladins can easily outlast a Shaman if they're Holy or Protection. If you're Elemental, try and keep them out of range with Rank 1 Frost Shock and Earthbind, which will force them to use Cleanse or Blessing of Freedom (which you can Purge) to catch up to you. If you're Enhancement, get in their face and use your powerful mana-free melee DPS to force them to heal. Restoration has a much easier time thanks to their powerful, more efficient heals, as Paladins have very few ways of interrupting opposing casters. Difficulty Rating: Medium Shaman * It often comes down to who has Nature's Swiftness or not, and who's the better/luckier player. * If you are at least partially enhancement-specced, use your mana only for removing lightning shield from the other player, and to heal yourself. If not, you're probably screwed. * Proper Grounding Totem timing and paying attention your opponent is absolutely key to this battle. Unobservant players who don't notice when their opponents drops their Grounding Totem to heal and instead mash Earth Shock to try and interrupt will lose to their opponent easily. * Generally you are going to have to change tactics quickly. Observe what spells they cast so you know what spec they are. If they are closing to melee range with a 2 hander out, you know he is enhancement and your best doing the stuff below: * Lighting overload, Stormstrike and Nature's Swiftness can all be dispelled using purge. * If you have time, Totem. But remember, only do the ones that will help you most in that situation. * Spec vs Spec guides below (You vs Him) * Enhance vs Resto - Same thing as a priest or a paladin. Conserve your mana and wait for him (he will use it) to use Nature's Swiftness. If you're quick you can purge his Nature's Swiftness right off him. Go straight for dps close range and you will have him. Remember, go two hander since he will most likely be using his spells rather than melee. Earth shock any of his heals. * Enhance vs Elemental - Same thing as a mage. Earth shock every move he does. Purge any of his buffs and stay very close range. Earthbind Totem soon as you're next to him. * Enhance vs Enhance - Interesting Fight. Depending on Gear, keep him kited while using most of your mana. Once it's close to gone just go straight to melee. If you pile on a Stormstrike with a few Earth shocks as soon as you see a Windfury pop he won't have time to do a quick heal. * Elemental vs Enhance - Use Earthbind totems and shocks. You have the bigger mana pool so you can afford to use shocks. Lightning Overload devastates if you can stop him getting close range for you to cast. Pile on the DPS and make it a quick fight. * Elemental vs Resto - Earth shock fight. This will most likely turn into who can Earth shock the other's lightning bolts/heals. Purge his Nature's Swiftness and use your Lightning Overload fast. * Elemental vs Elemental - Should be quick and simple. Earth shock most of his attacks and again Purge his top talent ability. * Resto vs Resto - Purge his Nature's Swiftness and Earth shock his heals. Brace yourself, this one will be a long fight. * Resto vs Enhance - I must tell you now. If you're attacking a enhance shammy as a resto, don't count much on your survival rate. Do not! let him in melee range. Purge any buffs. Kite with Frost Shock and Earthbind. Nature's Swiftness + Heal when close to death. If you mimic paladin tactics then you can kill him, but remember that you don't have a bubble so running away won't be easy. * Resto vs Elemental - Earth shock fight. Earth shock every bolt he casts. Purge his Overload and use Nature's Swiftness fast. Category:Shamans Category:Tactics Category:PvP